Chapter 31 – Oliver
SUPERNOVA
OLIVER
Need her. Our mate, the beast cries inside me, but he’s not clawing at my resolve.
He knows I felt it. He’s left us alone to experience it, to figure out what’s between us.
He tells me about her, how he wants her, how he needs her, how he loves her, as if there’s some camaraderie between us.
So much has happened in the past hour I don’t feel so threatened by speaking to the beast. I can’t fight with him.
I can’t or Nick might see how my eyes change.
It’s full daylight; he could see the truth.
“Well, I better go get a shower and change. Vale, feel free to grab a towel from the pool house,” I tell her as I step out of the water.
I’m facing her and for a moment she looks like she’s upset. She doesn’t want me to go and under different circumstances, I wouldn’t. I would take her with me. She quickly hides her disappointment, and I hate myself for causing it.
Nick can’t see my face, so I try to give her an apologetic look. I mouth the words, Call me, and hope she actually does. I need to explain why I’m walking away. I want that carefree smile back on her lips.
“Thank you for saving me,” she says, and the words hit funny. I don’t understand what she’s trying to say. Did I save Vale? I think she’s trying to save me.
“The bee,” she says as if reading my look of confusion, but that’s not what she’s actually talking about. I know there’s something else. I hope she’ll tell me one day.
I turn away because if I don’t, I’m going to drag her with me. Then Nick would lose his mind, and I’d lose a friend.
“What time are you two going shopping tomorrow?” Nick asks.
Shit! I forgot to ask if she wanted to come with me.
I was supposed to pretend I needed something unique from the gourmet shop downtown, then we’d actually go to the DDS, where I’d made an appointment for her.
It’s her birthday surprise, since Nick thought if it was a gift she wouldn’t refuse it.
But I’d talk her into getting her license in the parking lot if I had to.
“Vale, I forgot to ask, do you want to come with me tomorrow? I want to go to that European market on Tremont. Nick told me you could show me the way. I’ll treat you to lunch and we can hang out downtown if you want.” The words fly out of my mouth, and I hope she’s convinced.
When I look back at her, she’s sitting on the edge of the pool, pulling her waterlogged shoes off. She looks up with a bright smile that steals my breath. She’s so impossibly beautiful. The upset from a few minutes ago is gone. There’s joy once more, like my simple question meant so much more.
“Of course I’ll come! I’ve been dying to get out of the house. I’ve been so bored lately,” she says. “Can we check out that thrift shop Once Used Twice Loved? Kat says it’s awesome.”
She’s so excited. Her happiness makes me smile. I feel it blossom deep in my chest, making my heart thump. I’d do anything to make this woman happy. Her smile alone is worth the effort. She’s so beautiful, the beast whispers. Look at her. She’s ours.
“Of course we can. Let’s make a day of it. I’ll text you later to let you know when to be ready,” I say, then turn on my heels and walk away.
“It’s a date then,” she says, and I feel the muscles between my shoulders tighten. I don’t acknowledge her words. I continue up the path in my own squeaky, waterlogged trainers.
I hear Nick apologize to Vale, about how he feels bad for not doing more with her over the summer, but I don’t hear her reply.
I see my mother standing at the kitchen door, and I speed up.
Vale doesn’t know she’s here yet. With all the chasing I didn’t get the chance to tell her that she was in town and that’s why I haven’t been around the past two nights.
When I get to the door, she points at my shoes with an irritated look while she shakes her head back and forth.
I don’t say anything as I step out of the shoes and walk into the house.
I expect her to follow me up the stairs before we speak a word about what just happened.
I know she heard us. She’s ancient, her hearing better with age instead of worse.
My siblings will tell you she knew when we were up to no good.
I make it to the top floor, my floor. These are my private quarters. I don’t usually have guests here. I can feel Mother’s energy at my back, but I can’t hear her steps or her breathing. She doesn’t make a sound as she follows me into my bedroom.
It’s a bit disturbing after only being around humans lately.
Humans are so loud, when they breathe, when they walk, when they move.
The way I can tune into their crazy rhythmic heartbeats.
I get used to it after a while and don’t pay as much attention, but then when I get around a vampire or a demon again, their silence is irksome.
I walk straight into the bathroom before she can speak.
“What the fuck was that?” she asks.
I pull the T-shirt over my head and hang it from a towel rack. I pull my pants down and do the same. I grab a towel and slide it onto the floor underneath so the water won’t make a mess. “I don’t understand the question. What the fuck was what exactly?” I ask, annoyance clear in my tone.
“I heard you two. I was in the kitchen making tea for Nick when you two decided to have very loud sex in the backyard. One minute she was screaming, and the next you sounded like you were in pain. It was strange. That girl messes with my senses. Her mental blocks are strong, but I didn’t think they’d block our bond.
“I thought she’d hurt you. It felt like an explosion of power, then I couldn’t feel you anymore. Next thing you know, you two were screaming and chasing each other again. Was that the energy she feeds you?”
Her words are excited, intrigued, and my cheeks flush.
I’ve never been embarrassed of my sex life around my mother.
If anything, she’s one of the only people who understands what I’ve gone through.
That hunger. She has it too. But as I think about what Vale and I did in the forest, I find I want it to be private.
I wish for it to remain only between us.
I wish my mother hadn’t heard any of it.
No, it’s not embarrassment. It was a cherished moment between two lovers lost in need for each other.
“Are you alright?”
I wrap a towel around my waist and step out. My mother is worried. I can feel it through the bond and see it on her face. For the first time in a long time, she looks afraid. Did Vale scare her?
I think about how I can explain the energy she forces into me.
It doesn’t make sense to me either, but this time it was wholly different.
This time I felt her yearning, how much it pained her to be denied by me, I felt her orgasm.
She showed me exactly how it felt, and it did hurt me.
It was never-ending pleasure mixed with never-ending pain.
Oh boy, it was like something out of this world different.
The pain she feels for me, the pleasure, it’s so extreme.
It was the purest form of need I’d ever experienced.
“We didn’t have sex,” I tell her as I make my way to the closet. I step in, closing the door behind me, and move to the dresser to grab a pair of soft lounge pants.
“I don’t believe you. That kind of energy exchange doesn’t come from foreplay.” Her words raise my hackles.
When I step out of the closet, she’s sitting in my favorite chair, her legs crossed, and she looks irritated.
I sit across from her on the sofa, crossing my arms in defiance.
“Do you know why I don’t want to tell you?
I’m serious, I don’t want to share with you for once. ” She looks hurt but hides it quickly.
“So, she fucked you,” she says, and that irritation returns to her voice. “I heard what she said. She said she came inside you. It’s alright. No reason to be embarrassed.”
I’d thought Vale had said that, but I was so overwhelmed by her release of energy inside me that it was like a dream.
I wasn’t sure if it actually happened or not.
It didn’t seem like something she’d say.
Then again, she was so different today, so assertive.
She was unapologetically doing what she wanted, and it was spectacular.
She was so gorgeous when she was running from me.
I let her get away, of course, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
I had more fun in those moments than I’ve had in the entirety of all my years.
“Ash,” Mother says. “Truly there is no need for embarrassment. I promise.”
“I’m not embarrassed. She didn’t fuck me either, not exactly.
There’s no exactly about it. She didn’t physically fuck me.
Ah! She wasn’t even touching me when she said that.
It was her energy. It was intense. She controls it somehow, and this time it was different than before.
I felt her pleasure, her arousal, I felt her pain at being denied.
It was so extreme I thought I was going to pass out. ”
“This girl hurt you.”
I shake my head. “Not at all,” I say, but it’s not quite true.
Her emotions flayed me. “I felt her emotions, her pain, her desire for me, the ceaseless longing, the agony when I’ve told her we can’t have sex.
I felt the rejection of it. It felt like she had taken all the pleasure and pain in the world, melded it into a powerful, pulsating ball of light, then pressed it deep within me and let it explode outward so I felt it all simultaneously.
It was a supernova inside my soul. It was everything, yet there’s no evidence of it.
I’ve fed so thoroughly I’m full. Mother, I hunger no more. ”
I look up at her as tears make my vision swirl. Her stiff demeanor changes, and she looks at me with such a warm smile.
“I love her,” I say, and the words escape outward into the world.
I do nothing to stop them even though it scares me beyond belief.
I love Vale more than anything in the world.
It’s a love that’s incomparable, remarkable, and new.
I love her, and that knowledge makes my heart ache. I hold my fist to my chest.
“I know, son. I’m glad you figured it out.”
Mother stands and steps forward. She pats my hand, and I stand up.
I wrap my arms around her much smaller frame as my chest shakes.
When was the last time I cried in her arms?
When was the last time I was free to be vulnerable, even with her?
I’ve felt like the world weighed on me, crushed me for so long.
I hadn’t realized how painful the loneliness was till I felt the same in Vale.
I hadn’t noticed at all until today, after being so wrapped up in the fear of what I felt for her.
Is that what I’d saved her from? Is that what she’d meant?
Mother holds me in her arms, and I feel like a child again as I cry. She doesn’t leave me. She doesn’t run away from the scary, overpowered emotions that erupt from me like a volcano spewing hot lava.
I rant about my fear of hurting Vale. I tell her how the monster inside me claws to get out, how it wants her. I tell her how frightened it makes me. I tell her about how badly it hurts to know how much I love Vale. To love a mortal is beyond stupid.
I cry about how Vale will die one day, leaving me alone.
How would I live without her? I can’t leave her alone for more than a few hours now.
I hate being separated from her. Even when Vale doesn’t know, I still check on her.
I watch her from the windows just to get a glimpse of her beautiful face.
How could I survive losing her? I wouldn’t.
“You can’t think about the future, Ash. You can’t. You’ll only lose the time you do have, worrying about a future that you can’t do anything about.”
I know she’s right, but now I’m flooded by my staggering emotions. These things I’ve never felt before. We both sit on the floor, my head in her lap, while she brushes her fingers through my hair, trying to comfort me.
“Just be with her. Don’t take anything for granted. Embrace every precious second you have with her. Show her all the love in your heart. Do your very best to make her feel loved and special. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow, not even immortals. So why worry about the future. Just live, son.”
I want Vale to know how special she is to me.
One day, if someone asks her if she’s known love, I want her to think of me fondly.
I want her to picture me loving her. She should never doubt my love for her.
I sit up and look at my mother. I realize she’s never stopped parenting me, no matter how old I’ve gotten.
She’s tried so hard to be there for me, through everything, even when I push her away.
“Will you help me? I’m taking her out tomorrow. I want to make her feel special. I need advice.”
Mother smiles brightly. She’s so happy for me. “Of course I’ll help you. I’ve been waiting for this day for centuries!”